


spur my dull revenge

by mitch23k



Category: Batfamily - Fandom, Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: M/M, but anyway my favorite headcanon is all my fav characters love shakespeare, so ta da
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-03-20 10:59:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 15,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13716252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitch23k/pseuds/mitch23k
Summary: "My conscience hath several thousand tongues/and each tongue brings in a several tale/and every tale condemns me for a villain." -Richard III





	1. a beauty-waning and distressed widow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Catherine Todd takes Jason to visit the local library.

Catherine Todd was a good mother.

Or at least, her son thought she was.

He’d been mentioning it every few minutes for the duration of the bus ride.

“Mom!” Jason shouted, face pressed against the glass of the bus window. She glanced out and saw the Gotham City Memorial Library, the destination of this little trip.

Catherine hadn’t been in the building since she was seventeen. Granted, she was only twenty five now, but it felt like longer. It had a high ceiling, and rows and rows filled with books, no torn covers. That reason alone is why it’s a full half an hour away from Crime Alley.

Jason practically drags her through the aisles, stopping every few feet to check out a title he finds interest in. After ten minutes, he’s got a stack of books in one arm and Catherine is smiling awkwardly at patrons who are beginning to stare.

He lets her have a break in the Shakespeare aisle. She sits on the floor, giving her feet a rest, and flicks through his stack. He’s got a two _Junie B. Jones_ paperbacks that Catherine remembers vaguely getting him for his fifth birthday, and wonders idly where they’ve gotten off to. _A Collection of Fairytales, The Wednesday War_ , and _The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian_ are also included.

Her thoughts are interrupted by her stepson whispering “oh my god.” She looks over, and Jason has a rather large novel in his lap, and is staring at an open page.

“What?”

Jason looks up at her. “Is this even English?” he asks incredulously, face screwed up. Confused, Catherine tugs the book out of his hands, gives the page a once-over, and laughs.

“Jay, that’s Shakespeare.”

“That’s who’s-pear?”

“Shakespeare,” she enunciates, sliding the book back onto the shelf. She remembered being in Measure for Measure, Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, and other works of the Bard in her years in New York. “He’s a very old playwright. I’m sure you’ll have to read about him in school in a few years.”

“Why?” he asks again, too loud for a library. Catherine shushes him, and he lowers his voice before continuing. “I didn’t understand any of that. I think it was French.”

“Et tu, Brute?” she guesses.

“Something like that,” he agrees. She laughs again.

 _Jason’s a really good kid_ , she thinks on the way out, with Jason holding tightly to her hand, sporting a shiny library card (thank god it only cost a dollar) and three books out of his stack. She still acutely recalls finding out, at eighteen, that her brand new boyfriend, Willis Todd, was about to be encroached in a custody battle for his son, a three month year old. It wasn’t a very normal battle, where both parents wanted the child. Sheila, his ex, didn’t want the kid in her hair as she travelled to England for a medical degree. Will told Catherine that he couldn’t afford to give his son a good life, though she later suspected that, while that was true, he was also just plain lazy.

Looking down at the sweet baby, who she was sitting while Will and his ex screamed at each other in the hallway, Catherine couldn’t possibly imagine why either of them didn’t want him. He had adorable locks of black curls, and a cute button nose. His eyes were very animated, always taking in the sights around him, however dismal they may be in Crime Alley. He hooked onto her finger and babbled, and Catherine fell in love.

So Willis had allowed Sheila to escape to Europe on the condition she leave three thousand dollars behind with him. It had taken a lot of convincing, and yelling, and threatening, and kissing, but Catherine had gotten him to keep his son, though she lost her virginity and maiden name in the process.

It had always been a worthwhile trade. Even when she realized that he didn’t care much for his father and would only stop wailing in her arms. It was as if he knew she had saved him.

They get home and she spends an hour or two reading to him, as he lies on the old spring mattress. It feels odd, her caring for him, running her fingers through his hair, and not the other way around. It hadn’t been like that for sometime. Catherine had gotten fired from her theatre company after a drug test didn’t go her way when Jason was three, and she didn’t get many hours waitressing at the skeevy diner in Midtown, though one time she did get to wait on Bruce Wayne and his adopted son, who was very cute.

But after the drug test, Willis had gotten angrier and angrier as time passed and there was less money for him to throw at liquor stores. She loved him, so she dealt with it, with the fists and threats and bruises. And a few needles helped her deal with it, though she never used while Jason was home. Jason knew, he clearly knew all about it, he wasn’t stupid, but he never said anything. Just covered her up in a blanket while she was in the through of it and hug her tight.

What a good kid.

The only reason the roles are even reversed right now is because yesterday Willis had come home and found something (she never did find out what, but with him, it could be anything) to his displeasure, and Catherine hadn’t been home. Jason had. And so Willis took out his anger on him.

It wasn’t the first time, but it was usually just a bruise or two, never a cut and a black eye like now, so Catherine had splurged for a trip uptown to the library to cheer him up. Idly, she realizes as she brushes back Jason’s curls from his face, the books will probably not be returned on time. Who knows when they’ll have the time or cash to go back.

Looking down at her son, Catherine recalls putting on Richard III with her former company, (herself playing Lady Anne) and hearing her friend say the lines “So wise so young, they say, do never live long.”

It seems an odd Shakespearean omen, to have that quote fill her thoughts as she looks at Jason.

 _Well,_ she thinks, _no one’s hurting my kid. Richard III can go fuck himself._


	2. and if i live until i be a man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce learns of Jason's new-found love for Shakespeare, ft. lines from Richard III and Romeo and Juliet.

Sometimes Bruce doesn’t know how he got so lucky to find Jason Todd in Crime Alley all that time ago. 

The kid, his kid, in question, was sitting at the kitchen table, plate of cookies seemingly forgotten beside him, reading, and he looked up when Bruce got within five feet of the door.

_Not bad_ , Bruce thinks, and smiles. “Hi Jay.”

Jason grins shyly. “B.”

Bruce takes a peek at the front cover of Jason’s book. “Richard III? Isn’t that a bit advanced for seventh grade, kiddo?”

“I’m a bit advanced for seventh grade,” Jason replies confidently before a blush colors his cheeks and he ducks his head. But Bruce just chuckles and sits beside him. It’s true, really, that Jason reads far above his grade level. The only problem with that his, because he dropped out in fifth grade and didn’t do so well on his entry level Gotham Academy math and science examinations, they wanted to put him in a sixth grade class with a tutor. Bruce had to negotiate for his son’s sake -- the kid was fourteen, soon to be fifteen, and Bruce would hire twenty tutors to save Jason the embarrassment of being with children. Eventually, they settled on putting him a year below the kids his age, with a Algebra tutor and a promise to consider bumping his back up to his natural grade if he did well on his end of year exams. Jay had grumbled but accepted the terms in the end, and now was just about average in his math and science classes. Alfred and Bruce were absurdly proud. 

“Well, how does Shakespeare sit with you?” Bruce asked, poking the boy and getting a giggle in response. “Personally, I didn’t like him much in junior high, but appreciated him more after school.

“I like it,” the boy said quietly. “It's for English, but I'm reading ahead. Alfred said we should start Hamlet next. He thinks I’ll like it, but Barbara said I should read The Tempest.”

Bruce can’t help the smile that grows on his face. “That’s my favorite.”

Jason has a mischievous grin plastered on his face. “Why, cuz it’s about an old guy? You want representation?” 

The chase that follows is brief but intense. Bruce captures Jason quickly, and the punishment (severe tickling until the criminal is red in the face) is carried out swiftly. Out of breath, Jason gulps some air and says “A batarang, a batarang! The manor for a batarang!” 

Batman doesn’t giggle, but Bruce can admit a chuckle or two might have escaped him. He’s got a real clever kid. 

Later, when Jason’s falling asleep, eyelashes fluttering in his fight to stay awake, Bruce reads act three aloud for him. His child is silent until Bruce delivers the line, “‘ _ Tis a vile thing to die, my gracious lord/When men are unprepared and look not for it.” _

“I like that one,” the kid says, followed by a yawn. Bruce ruffles his hair fondly.

“You do?”

“Yeah.”

And there’s probably something to be read deeper in there, something about Willis or Catherine or all the kids on the street he’s seen die, and Bruce should ask him about it, but he looks at his son’s soft face, so much fuller than when he arrived from Crime Alley, and can’t bare it. 

He’ll bring it up another time. 

He’s said that to himself a thousand times, but he can never bare it. 

“Goodnight, Jaylad,” Bruce says, gives Jason a quick kiss on the forehead and leaves. Before the door shuts, he can just make out Jason saying, “Parting is such sweet sorrow…”

This time, Batman giggles. 


	3. a bitter fool and a sweet fool

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even a clown can read a few of the Bard's works, or have them read to him. 
> 
> Quotes from King Lear, Titus Andronicus, and A Winter's Tale. Title from King Lear.

The boy screams, for the first time. He’d been fairly good about that until now, kept his little mouth shut except for a whimper every now and then, a few mumbles for help. Oddly enough, he seems convinced that Batman will arrive any minute to save him. _That will change soon enough._

Meanwhile, his bitch mother keeps gasping every time he's hit. She reminds him of another bitch: Harley. Harley, who was currently idling outside in the getaway car.

The Joker punishes him for that scream, and the next one, and the next one, with harder hits, harder harder harder harder, till the crowbar is vibrating violently in his hands.

“Stop,” murmurs the blonde, what was her name _(sheila_ part of his brain supplies and he tells that part to shut the fuck up, he hates when that guy decides to open his dumbass mouth) and what the fuck his her problem?

“My darling doctor,” he purrs. “Are you backing out of our deal so soon? It’s only been two hours since we’ve had the boy.”

Sheila doesn’t bare him any mind. Her eyes are locked in on the batboy, and she takes a small, robotic step towards him, silent and unfocused.

He blocks her with the crowbar, giving her abdomen a little love tap, the kind he gives Harley when she’s being a moron. Birdbrain’s blood smear his pure white shirt.

“Sheila, Sheila, Sheila,” he coos. Her eyes widen in fear. She really does look like Harley, especially when trembling. “Would like the GCPD do find out where that nasty little doctor who performed that botched, _illegal_ abortion on that cute little fifteen year old went off to?”

Sheila shakes her head. “She’d been raped, and either way it was the right thing to do, it was an accident-”

A cackle breaks out from the Joker’s blood red lips. “Oh, darling. No, no, no, no. No. You don’t understand, perhaps. No one in Gotham cares if you’d done the right thing or not -- all that matters is a scapegoat. You never figured it out, a born and bred Gothamite? You really are a dumb bitch, my deluded doctor. However, I do _marvel_ at what kin you and your son are...you probably wouldn’t want to be separated from the child, would you?”

The woman’s gaze breaks from the bloody Robin on the floor to the clown. She blinks, confused.  “Marvel at what...was that Shakesp-”

“Boys!” he calls to the men in the corner. They snap alert, perhaps having forgot that anything of note was happening. “Do me a little favor and tie up the lovely Sheila, please, oh please,  with a cherry on top?”

Sheila, as she so often does, gasps.

She protests, weakly as they tie her to the post, but it’s stronger than she protested for Robin. Joker thinks that’s pretty funny.

Speaking of the kid, he’s been unconscious the whole time the blonde had been talking, so Joker hits him once on the shoulder to see if he’s dead or not. _Check the pulse_ part of him says, and then a better one says _now, where’s the fun in that?_

“He is stirring, sir,” he quotes to a shaky Sheila as her son moans. He smacks the crowbar against the boy’s head for good measure, and he drops against the floor again. Sheila lets out a cry.

“You killed him,” she whines. The Joker shrugs. Probably, the boy’s dead by now, he won’t waste time checking further. And either way, the small but growing puddle of blood that’s been building up for a while now is expanding, and if that doesn’t do it, his brain and organs are certainly bleeding inside right now.

But birds and bats are both stubborn, and this isn’t the clown’s first rodeo by any measure. He picks up the bomb he tossed on a crate earlier. It’s a small one, but it contains multitudes. He tosses it behind him, near the kid, and does the same with the crowbar. Bat will probably want it as a momento -- after all, he still has that playing card from their first date! He bomb starts ticking immediately. It’ll go off late enough that he and Harley will get away in time, but they’ll be no further survivors. That should assure that all goes well.

“If he stirs hither,” he lies, “I will seem to notify you.” Then he laughs and laughs and laughs, because he’s done it, the bird’s a goner now, and the ginger got crippled just last week, so Batman’s all his, his, his, to do with as he pleases. Well...he might want to take that older one, Nightvale or whatever he’s calling himself now. But that’s all for later.

“Stop! Please!” Sheila calls as he strides away. “Batman won’t accept this!”

Joker grins. “I think the death of his underling and his underling’s momma might distract him, sweetie.”

“You’re going to Hell,” she spits.

_Oh, Harley, Harley, Harley._

“Oh, truly, for I never once could say grace my whole life,” he retorts, and then suddenly he thinks _where’d that come from?_ and then his mind shoots to sitting on the couch with a different woman, dark hair, big smile, _wife wife wife wife_ his brain supplies, and she is reading to him and she is pregnant and now she is dead, _oh truly, sir, for I never once-_

And then he’s back.

Cackles escape him and that, combined with his temporary lapse, only terrify Sheila Haywood more, and she begins to sob. A few feet away, out of the corner of his bloodshot eyes, Joker thinks he sees a slight twitch come from the Boy Blunder, but then outside, Harley revs the engine and he blows Jason Todd a kiss.

“Buh-bye, birdie!” he crows, and he shoots the two hired henchmen beside him, locks the door from the outside, and strides away, coattails flapping in the hot wind, to meet Harley in the car.

They’re only a mile and a half away when they hear the resounding _BOOM_ from the warehouse, and the dark haired woman he recalls says _this cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen._

“Well,” the Joker observes aloud, as a mile away, Bruce Wayne sobs as he cradles his son to his chest, “that’s stupid.”

Harley takes her eyes off the road and nearly hits a pole to glance at him. “Huh?”

“We’re in Africa, bitch,” he explains. “It’s hot as Hell.”

And he and Harley laugh and laugh all the way down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I absolutely cannot write the Joker, I think only the ending is even decent, so this was a super hard chapter. Half way through I was like, wait, when the fuck did the Joker even read Shakespeare? 
> 
> If you're a buff, you'll realize that all of the Joker's quotes come from three characters, one name The Clown, and the other two named The Fool. He always quotes each line incorrectly, since I don't think he would've been paying a huge amount of attention when his wife read to him.


	4. think therefore on revenge and cease to weep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quotes from King Lear and title from Henry VI.

Batman sits and types.  

Alfred had given up on trying to get him to come upstairs hours ago. He’d contented himself with rearranging the med kits, over and over. 

Batman sits and types.

Work distracts, he’s heard. And it’s true. 

The file he’s working on was opened five hours ago, and his hands are cramped and painful from filling it out with new information, but he ignores it.  _ Imagine,  _ he thinks to himself,  _ how  _ he  _ felt.  _ And so he continues. 

And he’d already gotten condolences from Clark, Diana, Hal, Dinah, Roy Harper, the principal of Gotham Academy and oddly, Eddie Bloomberg, also known as Kid Devil. Apparently, they’d been penpals. Bruce could’ve killed himself for not knowing that, alone. But he also never knew about a woman named Sheila Haywood, or her connections to the Joker, or that the kid under his watch was growing so depressed and lonely that he’d travel to another country to try and save a woman he’d never met on the off chance they were related. Bruce knew that tears were sure to be involved whenever Catherine Todd was brought up, and that the kid didn’t have a lot of friends, but he didn’t know it would all end up like this. And that’s what he’s really going to kill himself over, every night, when he goes to bed picturing a bloodstained crowbar and when he shoots awake hearing an explosion.

He can’t get the image of Ja-

And he can’t even say his son’s name. He knows it will come out with a choked sob, and he can’t afford to be weak right now. Not while Barbara was learning how to work a wheelchair, not while there were two new graves in the cemetery, not while all of these things were at the fault of a sick man that needed to be put down.

Alfred clears his throat. “Have you called Master Richard, sir?”

It’s been two weeks, so Bruce figures that it’s fair enough that Alfred put off asking this long, but he shakes his head. Dick is still off-world with his team, and even if he was on Earth, Bruce isn’t sure he’d be able to say anything.  _ I have full cause of weeping/but this heart shall break into a hundred thousand flaws/or ‘ere I’ll weep.  _

There’s a copy of King Lear five feet away from him, on the side of the desk where his partner would usually sit and do his homework. King Lear wasn’t for school, though.  _ Free-reading _ , Barbara had called it when she’d dropped it off. The book had been devoured by a voracious reader who’d never had access to a library before he’d come to the manor. Bruce remembers watching the kid read it like a maniac and laughing. 

“Careful chum, you’ll rip a page,” he said, ruffling his kid’s curls. The boy had reddened, but thrown back some retort. Bruce had to swallow a sob as he realized he didn’t remember what his son had said. Probably a joke about him being old. But he wasn’t sure. He could still remember the tone of voice he had used when cracking jokes, and the way he’d light up when Bruce or Alfred would laugh. And so he holds on to that. He won’t - he  _ cannot  _ \- forget.

He could recall, though faintly, the first time they’d met, and how Bruce had laughed loudly in Crime Alley at the audacity of somehow who could steal tires off the Batmobile. 

His son could always make him laugh. The catch, of course, because there’s always a catch in Bruce’s life, is that he could always make him cry as well.

But he won’t cry. He’ll find the Joker, he’ll do what he should have done a full decade ago, when this maniac was first created, and then…

Bruce turns his head 35 degrees to the left and sees the project he’d asked Alfred to do. He’ll be able to see it from any position in the cave, when entering and exiting, he can even see it, faintly,  in the glare of the computer. 

The Robin costume hangs in a glass case. Alfred had done an excellent job of getting most of the bloodstains out and sewing up holes from the explosion, but he can just see one small dash of red on the cape, and instantly Bruce feels like he’d been stabbed in the chest. 

He closes the file, the one he’s been finishing, the one entitled  _ Jason Todd.  _ It’s complete now. He’ll never have more information to put in there. Not now, not ever. 

He’d give anything to have reason to write something else in it in the future.

Bruce picks up the book, flips through it. None of these books have been dogeared or written in - he imagines that his son was afraid someone would get mad at him if did.

However, there is one thing scribbled in the margin of the fourth page. At first, he assumes it’s a note of Barbara’s...but he looks closer. It’s in red ink, it says “bruce’ in lowercase, and it’s got an arrow connected pointing to Lear’s name. Bruce can’t even bring himself to laugh.  _ Old man,  _ he’d been called by his son hundreds of times in the two years they’d been acquainted. Bruce had always thought it funny. He never knew he had a young Cordelia in his hands.  

He remembers reading Lear as a teenager, and as he stands and prepares the Batmobile, a quote rings through his ears _.  _ _ Howl, howl, howl, howl!/O, you are men of stones/Had I your tongues and eyes, I’d use them so/That heaven’s vault should crack. She’s gone forever!/I know when one is dead, and when one lives. _

Lear’s speech when Cordelia dies. Sympathy pulsed through Bruce like a knife. 

There was a difference between them, however. Lear accepted death. Batman would crack heaven’s vault for Jason, send the Joker straight to hell, and then and only  _ then  _ would he follow him down. 


	5. for in that sleep of death what dreams may come

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wants Bruce. He wants Alfred. He wants the ghost of Hamlet's dad to stop whispering in his ear, is that so much to ask?
> 
> Ft. quotes from Hamlet, Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra. Title from Hamlet.

When Jason Todd wakes us, the first thing thinks is  _ Bruce! _

It’s also the first thing he screams, when he realizes he’s in a coffin. 

He punches and claws and kicks, and eventually, magically, somehow, he makes a hole in the top. However, when dirt starts pouring in and choking him, he wonders if he should have just suffocated. It would be over faster, probably. 

But no.  _ No.  _ He needs to save his mom. Sheila Haywood is still at the mercy of the Joker, and just because he got beaten and buried alive doesn’t mean anything. He’s Robin. Robin doesn’t let innocents die. 

What’s more, since Bruce is obviously on his way, he might be hurt by the Joker too if Jason doesn’t act fast to back him up. 

So, Jason Todd takes a deep breath and digs. 

Eventually, two torn fingernails, some bloody knuckles, and many tears later, Jason finally sucks in air. 

He keels over once topside, coughing up bits of dirt and dust. There’s a worm on his thigh, and he brushes it off quickly, skin suddenly crawling. How long had Joker trapped him there? Revulsion spreads across him, and again, always, he’s choking again, bile spurting out of him.  _ Ugh,  _ he thinks and pulls himself to his feet. Immediately he topples over again, and hits hard on the knees. That leads him to realize he’s not in his armor anymore. He takes inventory of himself, and belatedly notices that he’s in a suit. And he’s certainly not in Ethiopia anymore. 

He looks behind. There’s a gravestone right by the spot he just dug out of. It says  _ JASON WAYNE  _ it and it looks like marble. 

_ It’s just another trick of the clown’s,  _ part of him says internally, while the other side is completely freaking the fuck out. Because it makes sense, suddenly. He’s definitively in Gotham, definitively in the Wayne Family Plot, which the Joker could in no way access, and his wounds from the Joker’s torture  _ (the bloodied crowbar flashes through his mind then, and he nearly vomits again)  _ are just scars on his body now. Those would have taken a long time to heal, and Bruce wouldn’t have let him be hostage that long. No way in Hell. 

Blood comes out this time, when he retches. That’s not good. That’s really,  _ really,  _ not good.

_ How is he alive? Where’s Sheila? Where’s Bruce?  _

_ Bruce  _ an animalistic voice repeats in his brain, and Jason obeys the command robotically. Find Bruce. Bruce will explain. Bruce will save him. His dad will save him. 

As he drags his broken body feebly and weakly towards the street, only a few feet away though it takes minutes to get there, he can’t help but wonder why Bruce didn’t come in the end. In the end. There’s a phrase he’s never going to toss around carelessly ever again. It means something very scary now. 

_ When beggars die, there are no comets seen,  _ he thinks, approaching the street, remembering reading Julius Caesar with Barbara just a few weeks ago. Backstabbers killed Julius Caesar, and suddenly his thoughts turn to Sheila. If he’s dead, what happened to her? He remembers, faintly, jumping in front of her right before the bomb exploded. Maybe she survived? He wants to believe that, he really does, but something instinctual inside him says that Sheila Haywood is dead. 

He’s just starting to accept that as fact when he realizes that he’s in the middle of the road, and then the car hits. 

Everything is blurry and everything hurts. A couple -- two guys, both looking terrified -- jump out. One rips his phone out of his pocket and calls 911 while the other cradles Jason in his lap, telling him it’s going to be okay.

_ You didn’t do this,  _ he wants to say. Most of the blood covering him is from climbing out of the coffin, but his mouth can’t form the words to comfort them.

Jason’s tired. So tired. Tired of being hurt and feeling pain and being cold. Even though it looks like spring around him, he feels ice cold. Thank God it wasn’t Winter, he suddenly thinks, or the ground would have been too frozen to bust out off. 

Idly, as he’s being loaded into the ambulance, he wonders if he’s going to die again. That would be just his luck. It always went like that for him, hope being given and then taken away. Mom promises to go to rehab, O.Ds two weeks later. Bruce Wayne adopts him and makes him Robin, Bruce Wayne fires him a little over a year later. He thinks he’s about to save his birth mom, turns out she betrayed him. He thinks he’s about to save his birth mom again, the door’s locked. 

God, if he hadn’t gotten fired from Robin, would any of this have happened? If he hadn’t let Felipe Garzonas slip on that balcony, if he had made any movement to save him, would this have happened? 

And then, some good-old Catholic guilt, inherited from his very Catholic, very latinx mother, asks him an important question -- he let Felipe, who, no doubt, deserved it, at least in Jason’s mind, die. Did Jason go to Heaven? Did he go to Hell? Why doesn’t he remember?

_ Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin/Unhoused, disappointed, unlain/No reckoning made, but sent to my account/With all my imperfections on my head  _ whispers the King of Denmark. 

“Shut up,” Jason moans, and an attractive looking EMT pats his hand. 

“It’s going to be okay, buddy, I know it hurts,” he says with a kind smile. “Now, kid, tell me, who’s Bruce? You keep saying his name, buddy, who’s Bruce?”

Jason feels like he has vertigo. Everything’s swaying in his line of vision, even the EMT. He looks like Roy Harper. Jason misses Roy Harper. He remembers, once, awkwardly asking Roy for a kiss after a Titans mission, with no one else around. He wouldn’t have asked, he was so shy around Dick’s friends, but his crush had evolved into something akin to love. At age seventeen, Roy seemed so much more sophisticated and cooler than little fifteen year old Jason, so, blushing like a tomato, he’d asked for a small peck. Roy had looked suprised, even asked if Jason meant to ask Donna, and after Jason asserted himself, Roy had laughed. 

“Kid,” he had said with a winning smile that turned Robin’s legs to jelly. “I think I’m a bit old for you, y’know? But you’ll rope in some adorable bruiser from Gotham Academy in no time, Jaybird. Don’t sweat it.”

Jason smiled and nodded and thanked him for being so nice about it, then gotten in Bruce’s idling Mercedes outside Titan’s Tower and started sobbing his little teenager eyes out. 

Bruce, he remembered, had blinked, and awkwardly put a hand on Jason’s shoulder. “What did Dick say this time?” he’d asked, with the voice of an exhausted father of two.

Jason, blubbering, explained the situation. It wasn’t until later, after he’d been tucked into bed by Bruce and Alf that night, that he’d unhesitantly told Bruce something that he would never have even dreamed of telling Willis or Catherine. 

The next day, he started calling Bruce ‘Dad.’

“Kid, who is Bruce?”

He wants Roy. He wants Bruce. He wants Alf. Oh God, he wants Alf so bad, wants to have  Alfred read _ Antony and Cleopatra _ aloud to him with his soothing voice, raising his voice a few octaves for Cleopatra and her servant’s voices, letting Jason act out the scene where Antony commits suicide, fake-groaning and collapsing onto the ground, whispering faintly  _ “I am dying, Egypt, dying…” _

Alfred would always clap for him, even though he was probably an awful actor. Once, Bruce had strolled by the library during a performance, and he had cheered loudly, dad-like, making Jason blush, but he would never, ever, tell him to stop. Out of the one play Jason had ever been in while attending Crime Alley’s tiny elementary school, Willis didn’t show and Catherine made an appearance, but she and Crystal Brown both were kicked out, as they were both high off Crystal’s pills. Bruce and Alfred’s praise made him feel like a million bucks. He had felt invincible. 

If he lived through this, he’d probably never feel invincible again. That was kinda sad. He was only fifteen. Or sixteen. How long was he in that coffin? If it was Spring again, then he’s sixteen. He missed his sweet sixteen, and for some reason that makes him start crying.

He wants Alfred.

He wants his dad, not Willis, he wants his  _ real  _ dad. 

The Roy lookalike shouts something to another guy in the vehicle, something is dropping, and Jason mumbles “Dad” into the empty air before passing out. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone wondering what the whole thing with the car is, in Batman Annual #25, the issue that explains Jason's revival, after Jason crawls out of his grave, he tries to find Bruce but he's injured and half-delusional, and gets hit by a car. He's taken to the hospital, but turns vegetative.
> 
> In the annual, he wakes up one day, is still brain-dead, escapes, and wanders around Gotham until Talia happens upon him. In my head, to keep Jason and all the other characters as young as DC claims they are (how is Dick only 22 wtf @DC) he just stays in the hospital until Talia sees him while she's on some business. Either way, she takes him back to Ra's, and puts him in the pit, and you know the rest. The Ew!52 changed a lot of that story, so I figured not everyone knew the original. 
> 
> Next chapter is from Talia's POV!


	6. let not light see my black and deep desires

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A dreadful sort of understanding, ft. lines Macbeth.

“I’ll give you more time to mourn,” Talia says slowly, taking in the destroyed hotel room. It was nice - the French, she’s aware, know how to build a hotel. The two guards she had watching the boy lay on the ground, moaning in pain. “Mon dieu,” she adds, thinking it might amuse Bruce’s son, standing five feet away from her, breathing like he’d just run a mile. 

He does not smile, and with the heartbroken expression on his face, one might wonder if he ever will again.

_ So,  _ Talia thinks idly,  _ he read the newspaper.  _

Jason Todd takes one look at her and collapses to the ground, suddenly sobbing. His shoulders shake like an earthquake. 

The headline on that aforementioned paper?  **BATMAN RETURNS JOKER TO ARKHAM.**

Talia kneels next to him. “What’s done is done. Breaking windows isn’t going to do anything about that.”

For a moment, the former Robin does not speak. And then, low, he repeats, “What’s done is done.  _ What’s done is done _ .”

Talia wrinkles her brow. 

Jason looks up, his eyes unnaturally green. Two weeks ago, they were brown. 

“Things without remedy should be without regard. What’s done is done,” he recites by rote. 

“Macbeth,” she replies. 

And then, she knows what he needs. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! So I know it's been forever, but my computer has been broken and it's really hard to type on a phone, so ta-da, have this super short chapter to make up for it.


	7. sharper than a serpent's tooth, to have a thankless child

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What do you do with a problem like Jason?
> 
> AKA Bruce figures something out and tries to decide if the rules are different for the Red Hood, and what made him turn out like he is.

Bruce is sitting in front of the batcomputer, and he cannot breathe. 

Bruce is sitting in front of the computer, and the blood tests from the smear Red Hood left behind are on the screen, and Bruce cannot breathe.

All he sees is black for a moment, and when he opens his eyes again he’s lying on the floor, and his ears are ringing. He’s unsure if he passed out or tripped or had some sort of attack, and usually he’d be concerned, but right now he is staring at the screen and is hyperventilating now, too short breaths too fast, and now he is so, so scared. 

This  _ cannot  _ be happening. 

It takes maybe seconds, maybe minutes, maybe hours, Bruce doesn’t know, Bruce’s mind is blank with horror and shock, for Alfred to happen downstairs. It’s when Alfred glances at the computer, his face slowly going slack with fear, and drops the tray of tea and sandwiches he was carrying, that Bruce realizes that if Alfred can see it, he isn’t going crazy. 

God, he wishes he was going crazy. 

But he’s not. Bruce Wayne is sane, as sane as a man who dresses up as a bat and fights criminals can be. He is sane and Jason Peter Todd-Wayne is alive and has killed people, maybe many people, and he is roughly 6’1” and he is seventeen and he is alive. 

And he has killed people. 

At least three people, directly in front of Bruce, and he was wearing a face-concealing helmet the whole time, but Batman can read body language better than almost anyone in the whole, save Cass and Shiva and maybe Slade, and Jason Peter Todd-Wayne was definitely either smiling or smirking as he stabbed the three people. 

_ Bad people _ , part of his mind reasons. Captain Nazi, for certain, was a horrible personl. The two with him, the woman in green and the man with the crew cut, Bruce did an intense background check on him, and they were terrible people, involved in the sex trade and the League of Assassins. Terrible people. Criminals.

A cowardly and superstitious lot. 

But still people. 

And Jason Peter Todd-Wayne smiled as he slaughtered them. 

Alfred repeats and repeats and repeats the possibility of mind control, of Tommy Elliot, of Clayface, and all Bruce can hear is his own voice, inside his head, repeating,  _ three people three people three people.  _

There is no reasoning. 

Jason Peter Todd-Wayne is now a murderer. 

Felipe Garzonas.

Four people. 

Jason Todd is going to have to be apprehended. 

He doesn’t want to apprehend Jason Todd. He doesn’t want to take Jason Todd to Blackgate. 

Bruce recalls, though faintly, that Blackgate always scared his second partner. Privately, Batman theorized that the reminder of Willis Todd, who was continuously in and out of prison throughout his son’s youth, was the frightening part. It certainly wasn’t the usual patrons - no supervillain seemed to truly scare Jason. Jason always had some snappy retort ready on his lips, always so witty and ready. 

The Red Hood was rather witty as well, but Bruce hadn’t put that together. Alfred, if Bruce’s thoughts had been spoken aloud, would probably say that that was such a broad trait and too popular a personality trait for Bruce to pin down. He would’ve said it was impossible. He would’ve said it wasn’t Bruce’s fault.

But it is. It really is. 

_ It is a wise father that knows his own child,  _ Launcelot had said in The Merchant of Venice. 

“Sir,” Alfred says, eyes still glued to the screen. “The Re- Jason. Jason was on the news. He’s taken the Joker hostage, apparently.” 

Bruce was never wise when it came to Jason. He wasn’t prepared for Jason. 

Not that Jason was at fault for that. Dick had been just as much a handful. It wasn’t Jason’s fault that Bruce was an idiot. It wasn’t Jason’s fault that Bruce was a failure as a father. 

It wasn’t Robin’s fault that Batman wasn’t fast enough. 

Another line from the Merchant of Venice that stuck out in his mind? 

_ The sins of the father are to be laid upon the children.  _

Maybe that was the problem here after all.

Bruce’s thoughts were like a hurricane. He’d let Selina escape a thousand times, just because of their personal relationship. He had imprisoned her tens of times, and let her escape hundreds. 

He himself was a criminal. Vigilante. So was Dick. Tim, Cass, Alfred was aiding and abetting, Jim Gordon was aiding and abetting, Leslie Thompkins was aiding and abetting, Barbara Gordon was aiding and abetting. 

But this was different. Murder. Right in front of Bruce. Boom, boom, boom. 

But Jason was his son. Was. Is. Is his son. Was his son. 

Maybe it wasn’t. different Bruce wanted to find out. Bruce needed to find out.

He loads the Batmobile and climbs in, making sure his utility belt is fully stocked with batarangs. He has a terrible feeling he’s going to need quite a few.  

Batman was going to find out a way to save Jason Wayne, the Red Hood, even if involved blood. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so I know it's been forever, and yes, this chapter is basically stream of consciousness and makes little to no thematic sense, the quotes don't work, it's intensely hamfisted, yes yes yes...
> 
> but...
> 
> better than nothing, I guess? Ch. 8 will be faster and better, I promise! 
> 
> And yes, those batarangs do reference what happens at the end of the Under the Hood arc...poor Jason.


	8. let not your sorrows die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We have no friend but resolution, and briefest end."
> 
> TW for suicidal thoughts and actions. Quotes from Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Antony and Cleopatra, Titus Andronicus, and Richard III. Title from Titus Andronicus.

It’s the first good dream Jason’s had in months, and man, is it a good one. It’s probably the best he’s had since he was fifteen. 

In the dream, he  _ is  _ fifteen, and he’s been injured, maybe on patrol or something, Jason doesn’t know, but what he does know is he’s been tucked in by Alfred, he’s warm, he’s safe, his posters are still on the walls of his room, and Bruce is smiling at him.

Bruce always did that, set up vigil whenever someone was hurt or sick or he was feeling particularly creepy that day. But Bruce is not being creepy, he’s being a total  _ dad  _ and reading to his kid. 

“How much better it is to weep at joy than to joy at weeping!” Bruce reads in a funny, loud voice, and Jason laughs. It’s light, it’s cheery, it isn’t bitter or cynical. Neither of them are cynical, yet. He’s fifteen and Bruce is thirty-one, he’s an old man, but they’re happy.  Bruce cards his fingers through Jason’s unruly locks. Bruce smiles again. Bruce Bruce Bruce. 

Jason loves Bruce, his dad, and Bruce loves Jason, his son, and everything is perfect and nothing hurts. 

Bruce keeps reading. He always reads to Jason, sometimes Alfred does, but if Jason asks Bruce to read to him, Bruce will be there in ten seconds flat. 

“ What’s gone and what’s past help should be past grief,” Bruce recites dutifully, and for a second, Jason thinks  _ hey, that’s a different play than before,  _ and he looks at the book in Bruce’s hand, but the words seem to swirl together.  Oh well. It makes no difference. A comedy is a comedy is a comedy, he supposes. As long as Bruce is here, it doesn’t matter. 

“Hey Jaylad, stay awake,” Bruce says, ruffling his hair. Jason didn’t even notice that his eyes were slipping shut. “We’re almost done, I promise.”

“I don’t want you to stop,” Jason whines, because he’s fifteen. “I don’t wanna go to bed yet. Read another.”

Bruce chuckles. “Okay, what story do you want next?”

“Something funny again,” Jason demands, pouting. “A happy ending.”

Bruce smiles warmly again, his voice full of sweetness when he says, “Oh, Jay, you know that’s not how this one ends.”

Jason stares at him, blinks blankly once, twice. “What’dya mean B, it’s a com-”  
Well. Maybe not. 

The book’s title is now legible, and it doesn’t say  _ As You Like It.  _ Now it’s  _ Antony and Cleopatra.  _

Jason looks at Bruce. Bruce is still smiling, but now it seems vaguely...shark-like. 

Hmm. 

“Okay,” Jason amends slowly. “I like this one too. This one is okay.”

Bruce nods and keeps reading, voice becoming white noise, monotonous. Jason’s posters are on the wall still, but now Superman’s face is oddly clown-esque, and Madonna’s holding a crowbar, blood smeared all over her white virginal dress. Huh. Jason’s only just noticed, but if she was a little darker skinned, she’d look a bit like Sheila Haywood. 

_ Wait, who’s Sheila Haywood?  _ Jason thinks blankly. He’s never met anyone named Sheila before in his life. 

“‘ Good sirs, take heart. We'll bury him, and then do what's brave, what's noble. Let's do it after the high Roman fashion, and make Death proud to take us. Come, away. Ah, women, women! Come! We have no friend but resolution, and the briefest end’,” Bruce says. Jason suddenly has the uncomfortable image of Cleopatra and her asp in his mind. Hm. Talia probably would be a good Cleopatra if they ever put on a production in Nanda Parbat. 

He’s not sure why he’s thinking of Talia al Ghul. He met her once, briefly, when he was fourteen, and they didn’t exchange a single word. Batman did all the talking, really. He usually does. 

“Jay, are you listening?” Bruce says suddenly, snapping Jason out of his head. 

“Uh,” Jason says lamely. He scratches his cheek absentmindedly, a study in nonchalance. “D’you think you could read, like,  _ The Merry Wives of Windsor _ or something upbeat, B?”

Bruce smiles yet again. Well, hold up, maybe not a smile, maybe more like...sorta like a smirk, now?

Madonna’s dripping blood down his walls, and Superman is laughing. That laugh, Jason knows that laugh, _that_ _laugh,_ it haunts his nightmares, his waking hours, his every cell knows that laugh intrinsically, bone marrow deep, Amy Dunne deep. 

And that laugh means the good dream is over. 

“Bruce, help!” Jason yells, trying to free himself from the tucked blanket, but it’s tight, too tight to escape from, and Bruce is sneering now, sneering at his cowardice. 

“Be a man, Jason,” Bruce spits venomously, and for a second, his voice is not his but it is Willis Todd’s and Catherine’s and Sheila’s and Dick’s and Barbara’s and fuck fuck fuck this isn’t good. 

“Batman, please!” he screams, but Bruce is focused on the book in his hands, it’s Titus Andronicus now, Jason’s least favorite, Titus cut off Lavinia’s hands, Titus is the worst, Bruce is quoting him and sneering, reading aloud again but Jason wants him to  _ stop. _

“‘ _ Oft have I digged up dead men from their graves, and set them upright at their dear friends' doors. Even when their sorrows almost were forgot, and on their skins, as on the bark of trees have with my knife carved in Roman letters, ‘Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.’ Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things as willingly as one would kill a fly and nothing grieves me heartily indeed but that I cannot do ten thousand more _ ,’” Talia reads. She is not Bruce, Bruce is  _ gone,  _ Bruce is always gone. He hasn’t seen him up close in nearly two years. Jason’s mind is so fucked right now, he wants to know where Bruce is, where his dad is, he wants to get out of these fucking blankets, why the fuck is Talia here? Ra’s al Ghul is standing proudly behind her, one hand on her shoulder, and she looks up at Jason, and she does not smile. She does not sneer. One tear trickles down her cheek and Ra’s hand is tightening on her shoulder and the blankets are tightening too, he can’t breathe, he can’t fucking breathe, dirt fills his mouth, and the Joker is laughing laughing laughing and right there, next to Ra’s, is Titus Andronicus, and he has a crowbar in his hand and he slams it down on Jason’s head and then the timer stops ticking and everything explodes. 

+++

“Jason,” Talia is saying to him. She’s been saying that for awhile, Jason realizes belatedly, but he can’t breathe deep enough to be able to respond. She’s telling him to inhale, count, exhale, and he tries. He really does. He always tries his best, never half-asses something, not that it ever helps anything. 

Eventually, when his breathing evens out and his lungs are functioning as usual, he spares a glance around the room he’s in. It’s some sort of hospital room, certainly not Gotham Medical. There’s no way he’s in Gotham right now, but he can’t identify his surroundings too well right now, so he shoots Talia a confused look. 

“Oh, we’re in Maine. Portland, Maine,” she adds. “We needed to get you out of Jersey, fast.”

Jason smacks his lips together experimentally. He’s very numb, very subdued, so he’s definitely been drugged with something. Problem is, he can’t really remember what happened. 

“What happ’nd?” he manages. 

Talia looks at him quizzically. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

Jason thinks back. Black Mask, he had successfully pulled out his empire from under his shiny matte shoes. The Red Hood has shot him, but it was non-fatal, meant to be a really fucking slow death to avenge one Stephanie Brown, Dead Robin numero two, but then Batman had shown up a little ahead of schedule. So Roman was left to be saved by the cops Batman had paged, and the chase was on. Jason’s plan was to lure Batman to an abandoned building where he had stashed Him. The clown. Joker. Yeah, he remembered now. He had a gun to Joker’s head, Bruce had a gun in his hand, pointed at the floor, unable unwilling incapable of shooting. And then…then...

“I don’t remember,” Jason tells her honestly. “Did he shoot? Did  _ I  _ shoot?”

Talia shakes his head. “Neither of you did. At least, that’s what I’ve gathered.”

Jason attempts to sit up, but his body screams in distress and he lays back down. He’s definitely not drugged enough, that’s for sure. 

He takes stock of himself. Flash burns up and down his arms, his chest, looks like on his legs too. His autopsy scar hasn’t changed, his top surgery scars are still there, yippee. His ribs are bruised to hell and back (ha ha, mood) and he’s got minor bruising just about everywhere. A few cuts here and there. And his neck hurts. Stings bad. Turning his head tells him that there’s gauze on it. He prods at it, but Talia’s hand strikes like lightning and pulls it away. 

“Don’t mess with that,” she commands in her usual regally authoritative way. Jason listens to Talia most of the time, but he touches it again. 

“What happened?” he asks again.

Talia sighs. Talia sighs but tells him all the same. 

When she’s done, Jason nods and politely requests a few minutes alone. Talia seems puzzled, he usually welcomes her company, but leaves him be all the same. 

The second the door shuts behind her, Jason is pulling the gauze off his neck wound likes there’s no tomorrow. And there isn’t, really. There is no tomorrow, because Bruce Wayne threw a batarang at Jason Todd’s throat to save the Joker. Bruce Wayne threw a batarang at Jason Todd’s throat and the Joker set off the bomb that Jason had had packed away as a Plan B (always have a plan B, he learned from the world’s worst detective after all) and Jason nearly died, was so close to dying again that Talia admits she was slightly afraid, she who never fears, and the Joker got off with some burns and a one-way field trip back to Arkham. 

The gauze is off and sure, there are stitches, but Jason Todd is a professional and he takes care of those pretty fast. Soon the blood is gushing and he is on the floor, laying there. He knows how he was laying when he died, way back when, because the al Ghuls have some of the most advanced tech in the world and they can, though painstaking and fragile, hack into the batcomputer for a few minutes. And because Bruce is a paranoid bastard who hoards. Hoards everything. Including but not limited to cowl footage from the night Robin #2 died. 

He lays like that now, on his back, legs atop each other, one hand on his chest and one outstretched, as if he were reaching for Batman. 

Of all the places to throw the damned batarang, Bruce aimed for the neck. One of the most fatal places to hit. He could’ve gone for the hand or arm or anything really, maybe it wouldn’t have distracted Jason as well, but hey, parents are supposed to sacrifice for their children, right?

Hilarious. Tell him another. Encore!

Bruce Bruce Bruce. Blood streams out of him. Jason is accustomed to blood. He’s lived a bloody life. Well, two bloody lives. Catherine and her syringes, Willis and his fists, Sheila and her betrayal, Bruce and his vigilantism, Jason and blood. Always blood. 

_ “Bloody you art, bloody you shall end,”  _ the Duchess of York said in Richard III. “ _ Shame sets your life, and will your death attend.” _

Shakespeare is starting to piss him off. 

So, the blood gushes, the wound never heals, and what else is new? Just Jason’s luck, nothing ever heals with him. Where’s a Lazarus Pit when you  _ don’t  _ need one, amiright?

He blacks out again, he thinks, because he wakes up in a different bed, different room. Talia is there again. Talia’s always here, and Bruce never is. 

“Jason,” Talia says in greeting. “You idiot.” 

Jason turns his head. Oh, his neck is swaddled again, that’s for sure. There’s no getting that off without a fight. He’s also strapped down like he’s Jack Nicholson, and the image of his coffin swims before his eyes. He struggles to control his breathing. Talia notices this and begins to speak, maybe to take his mind somewhere else, but Jason’s probably reading too much into that. Talia’s a mother-figure, sure, but he’s got pretty low standards for those. She doesn’t care. 

“You could’ve died.”

“I know,” Jason croaks.

Talia doesn’t react. Of course. She’s known him well the past two years, which have been the worst two years, mentally and emotionally, of Jason’s life.

“The Joker is in Arkham cell #3477, Richard Grayson is holed up in Bludhaven, we’ve finally figured out who Oracle is, and you decide to pluck your stitches out? Tactically, we haven’t been in this good a place since you stepped foot in Gotham last month,” Talia says, glaring. “You could’ve ruined that.”

“The Joker’s in Arkham, ‘cause he’s still alive. Richard Grayson’s in Bludhaven, because he’s still alive. Barbara Gordon is Oracle, because I didn’t break Batman. Tactically, I fucked everything up and I’ve got no reason to be here,” Jason replied. 

Talia is quiet for a moment. Then, when she speaks, her voice is soft. “All the plans we came up with, out of those thirteen, you died in nine of them.”

“And Joker died in all thirteen,” Jason says, fists tightening. “The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray. Can you get me out of these restraints?”

“No. I think it’s time for a new plan. One that gets you and I out unscathed. And Bruce and the clown...not so much,” she says. 

“I don’t care. Use me for whatever plan you can cook up,” Jason says. “Make it dangerous. Really fucking dangerous.”

He means it, too. 

Talia stands. “I’ll be right back. Try not to rip your stitches while I’m gone.”

Jason answers with a short huff of a laugh. Talia leaves and does indeed come back quickly, now with an armload of books. She sets  them on the chair she was previously sitting in, and stands beside it. 

“I can’t plan it alone. And we’re partners, anyway. So I need your help.”

The partners bit, Jason thinks to himself, sounds a bit like an afterthought. He doesn’t really know where he stands with Talia. She’s a complex character. With Bruce, he was always certain of his role. Loyal son as Robin. Traitorous killer as Red Hood. Guy-You-Would-Throw-A-Batarang-At as Red Hood. 

Yeah, he’s still not over that. Boo hoo. 

He scans the titles laid before him.  _ Doctor Faustus, Gone Girl, Hamlet, The Iliad, A Farewell to Arms, Titus Andronicus,  _ a couple others. About fifteen total. Most are in English, but a few are in Spanish, French, German, etc. He likes to read, he likes languages and speaks about six fluently, five more that he isn’t perfect at, he likes to read in foreign languages. Talia is a good mother-figure, she knows Jason well.

You know, he’s fine. Not giving a shit if he lives or dies just makes planning all the more easy. He’ll find a way to kill the Joker. He’ll rub it in Bats and Friends’s faces. And then, if God is good (and he isn’t, if he’s even real, Jason is proof of that) he’ll die. Maybe this time it’ll be quick. 

But, there is one little thing to take care of first. 

Jason snatches  _ Titus Andronicus _ (English) and  _ Hamlet  _ (Russian) out of the pile, nearly toppling the remaining books in the process. He tosses them unto the floor. He doesn’t rip books, he’ll never destroy one, but he isn’t looking at that fucking name ever again. 

Talia picks them up, dusts off  _ Hamlet _ with care. “I thought this was your favorite.”

  
“It’s not your fault,” Jason says, closing his eyes. He could use a little nap, a dreamless one. “I think I’m growing out of those, is all.”

Growing out of Shakespeare, growing out of caring, growing out of worrying what Bruce thinks. 

Growing out of everything he used to be. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Told you it be fast. One day fast shipping!


	9. oh, i have lost my reputation!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stephanie Brown and Jason Todd share a lot in common. The biggest similarity? They both agree that Desdemona deserved better.

Stephanie Brown was a good student. She swore, she got good grades up until middle school. You could ask Crystal, she’d been one of those moms who kept grade cards. 

But, uh, the ‘I’m a superhero’ life clashed with the ‘I get reading assignments done on time’ life. That wasn’t really Steph’s fault, right? Like, if she had let Killer Croc get away last night, she would’ve probably been able to finish reading  _ Othello,  _ but then everyone would’ve died. Probably.

But even legally dead vigilantes, it would appear, had to take up fake identities to finish high school. And so there Stephanie was, in her Spoiler get up, hoping her mom wouldn’t walk in (she’d been begging Steph to hang up the cape for months), and trying to finish this essay before she left for patrol. 

No, she didn’t think Desmondea was at fault for her own death. That was some ridiculous Bruce type of thinking. Yes, she had read enough of the stupid book to get to this answer on her own. No, she did not have any quotes from the text to support her answer. Fuck off, Mrs. Gershnerr, Spoiler had lives to save. 

_ Ugh,  _ Stephanie thought with finality as she shut her laptop. The internet wasn’t helping much. Maybe her Google-Fu had gone dormat while she was in Africa or something. It didn’t matter, because Bruce had actually given her a job for once, and she didn’t want to be late and make him hate her even more than he already did. 

So Spoiler went gallivanting off into the night, wishing that she could at least have Batgirl by her side to bide the time. 

  
  


_ ++++ _

 

_ It’s a good thing Batgirl isn’t here _ , Stephanie thought to herself an hour later.  _ Cass would have a cow.  _

Not that it wouldn’t be an understandable time to have a cow. Because Stephanie Brown would be angry at the Red Hood if not for the fact that she was staring down the barrel of a gun from his seemingly never-ending supply, and standing uncomfortably close to a dead body. 

She really, really  _ hated  _ dead bodies. 

“I’ll ask again,” Red Hood said, rapping his gun against the wall to get her attention, as if her eyes weren’t glued to him. “Who. Are. You.”

“S-Spoiler,” Stephanie attempted to say confidently, failing miserably, as was her custom. “I told you, I’m Spoiler. A-And Batgirl is going to show up any minute, so if I were you-”

“Uh-huh. I think that if Batgirl knew her little gal pal was in trouble, she would’ve been here five minutes ago.”

_ Fuck.  _ Apparently, the mysterious asshole had a decent bullshit detector. 

And mysterious he was. Steph-  _ Spoiler,  _ rather, as an active combatant, was given information about Red Hood, and there was very little known.

Well, that probably wasn’t true. Batman probably knew everything about him. What she meant was, as someone Batman hated with every fiber of his emo self, she was told like, four things about Red Hood by Tim and Cass, and even then Tim had stopped Cass from telling her more. Because, you know, fuck Stephanie’s life, right?

  1. He can, has, and will murder you.



That was the most pressing concern. She’d watched as he shot Harry Fetter square in the head. She had tried to stop him, but she was too far away. She hadn’t even noticed him in the tenant building when she had been approaching Fetter’s apartment. He sorta...came out of nowhere. 

Also, Steph had only recently been brought back to life, so she was super hoping she didn’t die again. That would just be pathetic. 

  1. He’d only been in Gotham a few months, but it was clear he and Bruce had some sort of relationship, though Bruce had yet to reveal how they knew each other. 



That last bit was was clearly crap, because even a shit detective like Steph could tell that Tim was lying when he said that. 

“-and,” Red Hood continued, taking another step towards her, “You’re not Spoiler, kid. Trust me. I knew her.”

  1. He had a pretty creepy amount of knowledge about everyone in the family. He knew most, if not all, of their secret identities. 



Stephanie called bullshit on that. There was no way she’d ever met this asshole before.

Red Hood stared at her for a moment, then chuckled a little. “What’d you just say?”

Fuck damn shit. Did she say that out loud?

  1. You shouldn’t make him mad. Bad idea. 



Well, time to take use the Arthur Brown method of dealing with messing something up, and just roll with it, Stephanie figured.

“You heard me,” she said, then nearly smacked herself in the face. God, did she  _ want  _ to get shot? “You don’t know me.”

“Yeah, I don’t know  _ you,  _ I knew the real Spoiler. And, in case you haven’t turned on the news in the last year, she’s dead,” he reported. “Though she wasn’t in her usual purple then.” Again, he rapped the gun. Again, it pissed Stephanie off.

“I think I’d remember a dramatic idiot who wears a big dumb helmet to compensate for something,” Stephanie snorted, faux bravado rolling off her in waves. Clearly he had no manners if he was going to bring up dying to her. She really hated when people did that. “So yeah, no, I don’t think you’ve slipped my notice. Redheads aren’t exactly a dime-a-dozen in East End, you know. ”

There was a momentary pause, in which Stephanie Brown stood straight confidently, figuring that if she was going to die again she’d do it confidently this time, but Red Hood didn’t really do anything. He just stared at her. Well, the mask hid his eyes, but he sure  _ seemed  _ liked he was looking at her intently. 

Steph sure wished Cass were here, cow and all. At least she’d know what this guy was thinking. 

Then he murmured a low, “Hm,” which sounded scarily Bruce-like, and stuck his gun back in it’s thigh holster. 

Super. Now he was just going to kill her with his fists. 

And then he removed his helmet. 

Another pause. It was like it was high noon in those old western movies Cass had suddenly been obsessed with lately. They just stared at one another. And then…

“Well?” Red Hood said finally. He had curly brown locks, skin a few shades lighter than hers, and without the helmet’s apparent voice modulator, he had a thick Gothamite accent. That wasn’t as surprising to Stephanie as one might think -- more Gothamite’s had beef with Bruce than Metropolis citizens did with Lex Luthor. Plus, when he was “patrolling” or as Oracle liked to put it, “being a murderous little prick” (yeah, she seemed to know him well too), he didn’t stray far from the East End, so clearly he had some connection to the place. 

Hm. Even Bruce would have to be proud of that detective work.

(He probably wouldn’t be, though.)

“Well?” Stephanie repeated. 

“Ringing any bells?”

“Um.” She thought about it pretty hard for a moment, but she really had no freaking idea who this dude was. “Sorry. Can I ask why you wear a domino mask under the helmet, though?”

He snorted, then peeled that off as well. “Dramatic effect. Ask daddy-bats about that when you get back to his hideout.”

“He’s not my dad,” Stephanie blurted out, then instantly regretted it. She had such a diarrhea mouth whenever bad guys were getting their monologue on. Red Hood, however, just chuckled. His eyes were green, but...unnaturally so. Stephanie hadn’t seen eyes as glow-in-the-dark as his since Cassandra had come back from her fight with Shiva, freshly dipped in the Lazarus Pit, though it had faded within a month. Still, it had creeped Stephanie out enough that she had trouble making eye-contact with her best friend for months to follow. 

“Yeah, I hear you,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. “He sucks. Now that the small talks outta the way, take off the hood, Stephanie.”

She couldn’t hide her flinch in time, but she tried to keep the surprise off her face at the very least. Fuckshitgoddamn. 

Red Hood smiled at her, though it was more smug than friendly. “C’mon kid. Did you think I didn’t know? Only someone as stubborn as Crystal Brown’s daughter would-”

Red Hood’s little grin faded when Stephanie slammed him into the wall so hard the faded wallpaper seemed to shake. She shoved one hand against his throat and the other kept his dominant arm from grabbing for his gun. He didn’t grimace, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out it wasn’t uber comfortable for him. He could probably break the hold -- the guy looked almost as strong as  _ Cass,  _ which was saying something -- but her expression of rage kept him in place. 

“I don’t know who the fuck you are,” she spat venomously. “And I don’t care. But you know who she is, and this is the only warning you’re going to get -- if you touch a  _ hair  _ on her head, I’ll-”

“You’ll what?” Red grunts out against her hand. “You’ll punch me a few times and then send me off with a warning from daddy and nothing more because grandma Wayne cries from Heaven when people _ die _ ? Don’t make me laugh, blondie. I’m not afraid of a kid I used to babysit.”

“He’s not my dad!” Stephanie whined petulantly, then straightened. “Wait, what did you just say to me?”

“Okay, fine, maybe the Martha thing was a little harsh-”

“No, no, no,” Stephanie said, loosening her grip on him a little. “I mean, yeah, that was fucked, but after that. Babysitting?”

Red Hood grinned, all teeth. “Yeah. You really don’t recognize little old Jay? Catherine’s kid? I used to walk you and all the kids in this building to school.”

Stephanie stumbled backwards and Red H-  _ Jason,  _ Jason Todd rolled his shoulders a few times, cracked his neck. “Hell’ve a hit you got there, Stephanie. Who taught you to do that? Babs?”

Stephanie pressed a hand to the wall to balance herself. She didn’t really trust her legs to hold her up right then. Jason Todd? Alive? It couldn’t be. How could it be? She’d seen the news reports when Bruce’s son had died. 

But those eyes...Lazarus Green, just like Cassie, just like Talia al Ghul. The Pit brought people back. Maybe….

She could still remember when she had become Robin, right at the beginning of those precious weeks of joy, when she’d finally been told that Bruce Wayne and Batman were one and the same. She’d been surprised, then happy, then pissed at Tim for not telling her, then pissed at the world because she suddenly decoded who the second Robin had been, and what had actually happened to him. 

He was correct about the babysitting too. Jason Todd had, on about six or so occasions, watched after her and a few others kids whose mothers all hung around with each other. While they were off doing only God knows what, Jason had played with the kids to keep them entertained. He and some other kids who did well in school were recruited by the principal (who, it  later turned out, had been stealing school funds for years and had a girlfriend who was sixteen, because no one stays good in Crime Alley, not for long) to walk younger children to and from school, which he did do for a few years. Stephanie had thought he was kind of annoying, but a very entertaining storyteller when he was babysitting, retelling Shakespearian stories in a way that actually caught the kids’ attention, and sometimes he would produce candy out of nowhere to gift to her and the kids, so they had been friendly enough. 

But Stephanie was two years younger, and either way she’d moved out of the East Side by the time she was eight when her dad had been making decent money for awhile. She didn’t live in the shiny part of town that Tim was from or anything, but she’d been safely middle class for a while, and didn’t like to dwell on her time in the Narrows. She hadn’t kept tabs on Jason until the news broke that Bruce Wayne had adopted a brand new orphan, and then she was just jealous, because Arthur was Cluemaster by then. 

And, of course, his death had hit her hard, but when she had started Robin-ing, and Bruce would come to critique her, and his end comment to her was always one of two things: a) You don’t have much in common with Tim or Cass or b) You’re too much like Jason, it was easy to forget grief and start resenting. 

And, the worst of the worst - her return to the Cave, after coming back to Gotham, and a little part of her hoping, just a little, that she would have a memorial case. Something to prove she had mattered, she really was part of the legacy, Bruce had  _ cared  _ about her.

And there was Jason’s memorial case, Robin suit intact, and there was nothing to remember the fourth Robin by. Because, as far as the family seemed to be concerned, she hadn’t  _ counted.  _ It had been a scheme by Bruce to get Tim back, a cruel scheme, but a lie all the same. She really hadn’t measured up after all. 

With all this, Stephanie figured her nibbling resentment at Jason Todd could be forgiven. It was, like most things, Bruce’s fault in the end. 

However, she had just seen him shoot a guy. So. 

Jason was staring at her. Oh. She’d probably been occupied with her thoughts for a few. Oops. Time to get back to Spoiler-ing. 

“You shot my target,” she said awkwardly. 

“Uh, okay, act like we don’t know each other,” Jason muttered, and did it sound a little...bitter? Maybe Steph was imagining things. “He was a pedophile. Sorry, you’re right, I should’ve let you hand him off to B and get locked up for a few months, get out, come back here, and hurt more kids. How could I have been so blind?”

Stephanie rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I’m so glad you’ve seen the light. Listen, don’t think for a second I give a damn about this asshole, but I’m under orders. And I’m not a murderer.”

“If it were easy, everyone would do it, I suppose,” Jason said faux thoughtfully. “Let’s not worry about Handsy McFuckface over here for a second, ‘kay? Aren’t you wondering how I knew it was you?”

Stephanie stuck her chin, the way Tim did when Dick got all self-righteous. “It doesn’t matter. You’re a criminal.”

“Could’ve sworn vigilantism is illegal in most cities, including Gotham, our lady of perpetual shit.”

“I could call Batman right now, you know.”  
“I kinda figure that you and your ‘not-dad’ don’t get along real well, Steph, but by all means, try and get him on the phone. I bet you twenty bucks he doesn’t pick up,” he said, twirling his gun on one finger. 

_ Okay, that hurt. _ Stephanie rolled her eyes to play it off. If she’d left her comm unit on, this could all be over by now, but she could tell when she was annoying Oracle, so she shut it off for the night. So much for making things easier on herself. “I’ll bite. How’d you know?”

Jason smiled at her, something still playful and boyish in his face. He really didn’t look a lot different, she wasn’t sure how she didn’t recognize him earlier. Taller, yes, bigger, obviously, but Jason Todd was all dramatics, flair, and personality. He was hard to miss in a crowd. “Only Crystal Brown’s daughter, I was saying, would be stubborn enough to keep calling it East End or Narrows when everyone switched over to calling it ‘Crime Alley’ years ago. Plus, your voice is just as shrill as it was way back when,” he added, and Steph actually cracked a grin.

“Shut up,” she said, then wiped the smile off her face. He’d killed someone! Cass would never forgive her letting him get away with it! “Jay, you-”

He shook his head. “I lived three doors down from this asshole for five years. He had this coming, trust me. I don’t Batman will even care, but just in case he does, I’d advise you get outta here. I’m assuming your comms are off?”

Despite her better judgement, Stephanie nodded. 

“Then it’ll be hard to prove we were here at the same time. Tell Barbie you got here right after me, too late. Or better yet, you and I talked, but you were very heroic and threatening and I ran off with my tail between my legs. I’m sure they’ll eat that up,” Jason said with an air of sarcasm. “Just come up with something.”

Stephanie’s eyes were still on the dead man between them.

“Steph, c’mon. You don’t- I knew this guy. I knew him too well. This….he earned this. He earned worse than this,” he decided, and he worked his jaw. Stephanie could feel her eyebrows furrow in concern. She took a step towards him, hand outreached, and he jerked back, gazing at Fetter. “I should’ve made it last. I should’ve made it _ hurt _ .”

Stephanie swallowed. “Jay. Jason, he’s dead. He can’t...”

His head snapped up to meet her eyes, and he nodded jerkily, robotically. “Yeah. And that’s a  _ good thing.  _ I thought you’d understand that.”

“I...I don’t…” she trailed off. Because she did. She knew it was a better world with less Mr. Fetters in it. Hell, she remembered being fifteen and nearly killing her father with a tire chain, and having to be stopped from ‘crossing the line.’ 

But she’d sworn an oath as Robin. Even though she’d been fired, that still meant something to her. The legacy meant something to her. 

“I won’t call Batman,” she said quietly in the end, because what else could she say? Jason was...different, that much was obvious. Crime Alley took good kids, chewed them up, and spit out very different adults, but still...Cassandra’s green eyes had faded. The Red Hood had been in Gotham for three months, so he’d been alive for at least that long. His eyes were still green.

Something was terribly wrong. 

“Please, just go,” she said pathetically. Jason sneered but turned on his heel all the same, readied his grappling hook, perched on the window, positioned himself, and-

“Wait!” 

He looked at her, confusion plain on his face. 

“Would you say Desmondea is at fault in any way for her demise?” she said quickly.

Superhero or not, essays had to be completed. And Catherine’s kid had always been good at English.

Jason’s eyes twinkled, for just a moment. “No. No, I wouldn’t.”

“Please provide textual support.”

 

++++++

 

Luckily, Batman had been too wrapped up in the faulty story about Red Hood to yell at Stephanie for once, so she could take her time writing up her essay. 

_ “...and Desdemona did everything her husband asked of her, even when it was unreasonable or something she didn’t agree with. Desdemona is not at fault for her murder in any way shape or form.  Othello, though treated terrible and manipulated by those around him, is partially to blame. He even admits this. ‘ _ _ Of one (...) (who) threw a pearl away/Richer than all his tribe.’ (Shakespeare, 215). _ _ The main component, Iago, however, causes her death and feels no remorse for this, or any other terrible thing he does. Iago is even the one who suggested she not get a merciful, painless death by way of poison, but rather, he tells Othello that she should be strangled to death.  _

_ Some might say Desdemona is at fault because she says so herself. When Emilia asks who has slain her friend, Desdemona responds, ‘ _ _ Nobody; I myself/Farewell/Commend me to my kind lord/O, farewell!’ (Shakespeare, 213). However, this is only because Othello has spent the last two acts making the previously proud and sure Desdemona confused and anguished over why her husband is angry with her. She ends up doubting herself and putting the blame where it shouldn’t be -- at herself. _

_ In conclusion; Othello, Iago, and the racist society of Europe can all be blamed, in different ways, for the ending of the play, but not Desmondea herself.” _

Stephanie shut her laptop with a grin on her face and flopped down on her bed, pleased with her (and Jason’s) work. 

Maybe she would end up finishing  _ Othello  _ after all. It might help her the next time Tim or Bruce wanted to blame Robin #2 or #4 for their own demise. 

She opened the play to a random page and read aloud, “Reputation, reputation, reputation! Oh, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial!”

Hm. She wondered if Jason liked that line.

Robin #4 pulled up the covers, flicked off her lamp, and dreamt of being a little girl in the East End, before everything got so complicated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so
> 
> the whole babysitting thing? 100% headcanon. the fact that steph used to live in crime alley? eh, i remember reading that she did use to be rather poor, but i can't remember if it was crime alley bad. so, possibly 100% headcanon. crystal and catherine knowing each other? 100% headcanon, but it's not that unlikely if you consider how many similar circles they would've run in. also, arthur and willis probably met, so why not the moms? jason and the whole disgusting mr fetter guy? 100% headcanon, but everyone who has read battle for the cowl knows that jason is a csa survivor, and in tim's robin run stephanie mentions on more than one occassion that her father had friends who she feared so...i figured they would have one more thing in common
> 
> but i have a lot of feelings about jason and steph, and feel like if dc ever gave steph her backstory back (robin!stephanie ftw!!!) they'd get along really well.


	10. i would my father look'd but with my eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Catherine Todd said it best. Richard III can go fuck himself.

Oliver Queen looks disappointed. Jason really, genuinely, does not give a _fuck_ about that, but it’s making Roy fidgety, so he feels a little guilty as he sits at the table adorned with the letters _JL._

Likewise, he barely conceals a flinch at the looks of concern Donna Troy, Victor Stone, and various other former Teen Titans members shoot Kori, who just nods politely in greeting at them and focuses on the meeting. That pissed Jason off - he wonders vaguely if they’d react differently if he told them if the mysterious rogue in the red mask been their honorary team mate once or twice, three years past.

Actually, they’d probably be more horrified.

But in the end, as it always seems to go, despite all his denials, the only person whose opinion truly matters to the Red Hood is Batman, who sits directly across from him. That’s how lucky Jason was - he got to make eye contact with the man the whole time. Joy upon joy.

He can’t see Batman’s face under that dumbass cowl, but every Robin, probably even the new kid, who apparently sprouted from Talia (he’s still trying to wrap his mind around that, by the way - why the hell didn’t she say anything to him?), knows what that familiar forehead scrunch, combined with the mouth in a set line and the very, very, _very_ minor head tilt translates to: _what the hell do you think you’re doing?_

Yeah, Jason knew that look.

And he’s sick of it.

 _And every tongue brings in a several tale, and every tale condemns me for a villain_.

He remembers reading Richard III with Bruce.

He needs to stop thinking about that. He thought he gave up on the Bard when he’d had that awful nightmare after Bruce had cut his neck. Yeah, he’d helped Stephanie Brown with her homework a little, but really, that was because he felt he owed her for stopping her mission. He needed to stop thinking about reading Richard III. And when they read Measure for Measure. And Titus Andronicus (though Bruce thought it a bit bloody for a fifteen year old). And Hamlet.

Fuck. Now he’s thinking about the ghost scenes. Fuck fuck fuck.

 _Fuck Bruce,_ he thinks. _Fuck Bruce and fuck Richard III and fuck Hamlet Sr. and Gertrude and Hiro and Sheila and Catherine and fuck Lavinia and Barbara and Mercutio and anyone else who ever made me cry._

He’s got to stop thinking about them. All of them.

So as he sits through the meeting, he focuses on the letters on the table and tunes out Superman’s speech, Wonder Woman’s thanks to all present (Red Hood included, thank you very much) who helped fight off the latest alien invasion, and Batman’s closing statement that’s mostly aimed at the real JL members anyway.

Absently, Jason recalls being here once before, attending an early League meeting with his fath- _partner_ , he corrects mentally, and being so starstruck and giddy that’d he idiotically asked Hal Jordan what the initials on the table stood for. Thank God Green Lantern thought he was joking.

And finally the meeting is over. The Outlaws, as they have recently been christened by the media, stand with the others and begin to leave, but Jason is stopped by Nightwing, because of fucking course. Fucking Dick Grayson and his never ending crusade to ruin Jason’s life. That last time Jason had seen him, he’d been tossing him in Arkham. Four months later, Kori had broke him out to save Roy, and there they were.

_Perjury, perjury, in the highest degree. Murder, stern murder, in the direst degree._

“What exactly are you doing?” Grayson says evenly, clearly eyeing his former teammates through the domino mask.

“Not Starfire or Harper, don’t worry,” Jason deadpans, and he only receives a _look_ in response. Whatever. He pushes past Grayson and he lets him run. Maybe miracles do exist.

_All several sins, all used in each degree/Throng to the bar, crying all, “Guilty! guilty!”_

Unfortunately, this leads him back to his new team, the likes of whom is being evaluated by Superman and Batman.

_Gosh diddly darn it._

That wasn’t really Shakespeare, but fuck if it wasn’t occupying his thoughts right then.

He stalks over. Superman glances over then turns his gaze back to Roy. “I just don’t understand,” he says desperately.

“There’s nothing to understand,” Roy replies, looking nervous. Jason just wants to know what he’s walked in on when his answer appears. “Kori and I have known each other since we were kids. She came to save me when no one else did.”

 _Ah._ Yes, Big Blue had known Roy for years. Poor guy was feeling confused as to why one of the golden boys had gone bad. Well, not bad. Anti-heroic, maybe, but hey, that wasn’t fair either, because Roy was the only member of the team that had never killed a guy, so.

“We understand Starfire,” Superman began, but Batman finished with a turn to Jason. “We don’t understand _him_.”

_I shall despair. There is no creature loves me, and if I die no soul will pity me._

“Yeah, you never did,” Jason replies, cool and calm, ignoring the pang of agony his once mentor’s clear revulsion sent through him. “Kori, Roy, you ready to go?”

Before his friends can answer, Bruce steps into Jason’s personal space.

“What are you trying to pull here?”

“Oh, you didn’t hear? I’m kidnapping all the gingers in my vicinity. Watch out, big guy, I’m going after Ivy next,” Jason says seriously.

Bruce’s expression is the opposite of amused. “You broke out of Arkham.”

“Astute observation.”

“You tried to kill Red Robin.”

“ _Yum._ You’re not going in chronological order. Oh, and you weren’t actually dead, I hear? Thanks for the call to tell me.”

“If you had killed him, I would be dead.”

“Damn, what a missed opportunity.”

He doesn’t mean it, there’s no bite behind it, but Clark clenches his jaw. Out of the corner of his eye, Jason can see Roy with a concerned look, like he thinks one of them is about to start swinging, and Kori with a... he doesn’t know what to call Kori’s look, actually. Jason’s brain is stuck between describing it as entertained and as angry. He hopes the anger’s for Bruce and not him. Nobody likes Starfire when she’s angry.

“If you step foot in Gotham again, and hurt any of her inhabitants, I will hunt you down and put you right back where you belong.” _Arkham,_ obviously the place Bruce is talking about, is unspoken, but Jason gets the message. “If you hurt Tim again, I will put you back there. If you hurt Nightwing or Robin or Black Bat or Batgirl, I will put you back there. I have no qualms about it. Understood?”

And Jason likes to say he doesn’t care what Bruce thinks about him, he likes to say it a lot, but shit, if it doesn’t hurt that he thinks that Jason would hurt Batgirl, Stephanie Brown, former street rat alumni herself, Dead Robins alumni herself, half the reason Red Hood had gone after Black Mask upon his return to Gotham, and, fun fact for the folks at home, a child formerly babysat three or four times by Jason Todd in Crime Alley as their daddies busied themselves with selling drugs and their mommies busied themselves with buying them.

Then again, she couldn’t be much older than Tim Drake, right? And Jason had stabbed him, half mad with Lazarus Syndrome after hearing of Bruce’s “death”, no hesitation.

_And if I die no soul will pity me. And wherefore should they, since that I myself find in myself no pity to myself?_

_Fuck,_ Jason thought suddenly. He knew, rather than felt, that the pit was flowing in his veins. _Don’t think about the pit,_ he commanded himself. _Don’t think about Bruce dying. Don’t fucking think about Crime Alley and stop fucking thinking about Richard III you fucking idiot._

For some reason, his expression must have spelled out confusion, because Bruce chose then to continue his threat with “People who hurt my children don’t get much compassion from me.”

 _Fucking liar, fucking liar,_ Jason wanted to shout. His fists curled. _I was your kid!_

“Then I guess,” Jason said instead, “you should stop trying to rehabilitate the Joker, right?”

Roy, Kori, and Clark collectively sucked in a breath, but Batman’s expression remained ever unchangeable.

_Wasn’t I?_

Jason spun on his heel and marched out, grinding his teeth. Bruce had given up on him, he’d given up on him -- not that Jason _cared_ , but he didn’t think…

He didn’t regret his kills. They were rapists and child murderers _(and the clown’s laugh was ringing ringing ringing in his ears and fuck Bruce, fuck Sheila, fuck whoever let the Joker plead insanity, fuck)_ and pedophiles and people who dealt to kids, and they all had it coming for them a mile away. He was doing justice. He was making the world right. He was making sure no poor kid would ever end up like him, ever again, and he wouldn’t take anything he’d done back...

But sometimes, late at night, if the news was reporting that the Joker had broken out of Arkham and miles and miles away Jason had locked himself in one of the spacious rooms in Kori’s ship, and he was hyperventilating, and tired, bone-tired, he could admit, very quietly, that maybe he’d give back one or two petty dealers, or one of Black Mask’s assistants, for Bruce Wayne to hold him in his arms and murmur _it’s okay Jay-lad, it’s alright, no one can hurt you, I’ve got you_ one more time.

_Methought the souls of all that I had murdered came to my tent, and every one did threat tomorrow’s vengeance on the head of Richard._

Fuck.

Roy and Kori had his back, he knew. Jason had never trusted anyone the way he trusted them, deeply and intrinsically, especially Roy, who could on occasion make Jason blush like he was fifteen again. They understood him, he understood them. They’d all be through the same level of shit, somewhat, and there was no shame in anything anyone had done, because somebody in their sad little trio had probably done something worse.

Probably Jason. Usually Jason.

But he had safe with Bruce. He’d never once gotten seriously hurt doing what Bruce told him to do.

But Jason doesn’t care. He didn’t care what anyone thought of him.

Richard III could go fuck himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Richard III monologue is actually my favorite in all of Shakespeare, so this is automatically my favorite chapter.
> 
> So yes, I skipped Bruce's 'death', and I skipped the outlaws all meeting up, but I tried to mention enough of both of that to catch up.


	11. where is thy blush?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose Wilson and Jason Todd have more than a few things in common. Particularly, an appreciation for Shakespeare, and their kinda-sorta exes leaving them.

Kori graced Jason with a hug and Roy with a kiss, one that had Jason turning away with a blush. And then she boarded her ship with Kom’randr and flew off. Tamaran or Bust. 

And Roy waved after her for a full five minutes. 

That’s when Jason should have known something was wrong. 

_ Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing, and like enough thou know'st thy estimate: the charter of thy worth gives thee releasing, my bonds in thee are all determinate,  _ Shakespeare had said when the Earl of Southampton had fallen out of his favor. Jason remembers getting a leather-bound book full of the sonnets for his seventeenth from Talia, which also doubled as a going-away gift, for three days after that he was back in Gotham, initiating a plan to force Batman into killing the Joker. He’d read them on the flight to his hometown, taking breaks in between reviewing his plans for taking down Black Mask. 

He wondered if Roy had ever given them a skim. 

At least, the first seventy or so.

“She’s really gone,” the man in question said, finally letting his hand flop to his side. 

“She’ll be back,” Jason reminded him, stepping forward to be side by side with him. “She said she’d come back after Kom’randr was stable.”

Roy didn’t look very convinced, but he nodded all the same and turned. 

They walked in tandem back to their bikes, where Rose Wilson waited, leaning against Jason’s. He resisted the urge to tell her to get off, reminding himself that she’d just helped them out of a sticky situation. 

“Boys,” she said dryly in greeting, sheathing the katana she’d been polishing. “I hope Starfire has a good flight, if it helps. I always liked her.”

“Good to know,” Roy retorted. Jason gave him a look, but the redhead just rolled his eyes in response. 

Huh. That was usually Jason’s job. 

Something  _ was _ up with Roy.

“So, I’ll give Ravager a ride,” Jason said finally, after a few seconds of dead (haha) silence. “I’ll drop her off at the tower, and meet you back at the warehouse?”  
Roy stuck a leg over his bike, then gave Jason a look of total confusion. “Back at the- oh, shit-fuck. I didn’t tell you.”

Rose looked vaguely interested. She brushed a stray strand of white hair behind her ear. “Oh?”

“Uh...about three days ago, Ollie gave me a call. He wants my help with a case in the city.”

“Okay,” Jason responded, awkwardly fiddling with his helmet in his hands. Rose snorted. “Well, I’ve got some stuff to do in Gotham anyway,” he lied, “so maybe in a couple days, we’ll meet back up at-”

“It might take a little longer than that,” Roy interrupted, looking at his shoes. 

Jason’s stomach did something weird, a kind of lurch, and he managed to say, “How long-”

“He wants me back,” Roy said, sitting down hard on the seat of his bike. “Dinah talked to him -- he said I’m golden, everything’s in the past. He wants me on his team again, in the  _ family  _ again. Can you believe it?” He laughed a little, clearly satisfied. “It’s been months since I’ve seen Connor and Mia…”

“But what about-” Rose started.

“That’s great,” Jason said, cutting her off with a clear look. “I mean, geez buddy, that’s what we all wanted, right? Good for you.”

_ For how do I hold thee but by thy granting? And for that riches where is my deserving? The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting, and so my patent back again is swerving. _

“Yeah,” Roy said, smiling. “Yeah, that was the goal. And we all got it. Kori got her sister back, I got Ollie and everybody, and you-”

Well. Roy seemed paralyzed for a second, having said something he shouldn’t.

It was true, Red Hood had been getting closer and closer to the Bats in Gotham in the last few months, had even patrolled with them a few times, but family? Grayson or Steph might call him that, but he was pretty sure the others didn’t consider him ‘one of them’ just yet. 

Jason had found a family all the same, but it was a family of three, counting him, and one was currently headed toward Tamaran.

The other was five feet away from him, but wouldn’t be that close for much longer. 

“Like I said,” Jason got out, knuckles white on his helmet, “I’ve got some stuff in my city.”

“Right,” Roy said. There was a moment’s pause, and then he got up and walked over to Jason, arms outstretched. Jason laughed, but hugged him all the same. A corny young adult writer would probably say it lasted a few seconds too long to be friendly, and Jason would be inclined to agree. Roy patted him on the back twice and pulled back. 

“See you around, Red Hood,” he said with a lazy mock salute, hopping on his bike. 

“You too, Arsenal,” Jason replied, and waved for quite some time after his friend had driven away. 

Rose Wilson stalked over. “Sorry.”

“For what?”

Rose snorted again. “I’m not an idiot. I know all about being left behind. My dad, my brother, Cassie…”

Ravager took a second to collect herself, and in that time Jason recalled that Cassie Sandsmark, teammate to one Tim Drake, used to be pretty buddy buddy with Rose.  _ Hmm _ , he ruminated, looking at Rose’s face. Maybe buddy was too distant a word. 

Maybe he and Rose had a similar problem in Cassie and Roy.

“So, sorry,” she finally said. “I get it. Does he know?”

“Does Cassie?” Jason threw back, and instantly regretted it. Neither of them needed to clarify what they didn’t know. It was obvious enough. 

“Am I getting a ride or not?” she spat, and Jason gestured for her to get on the seat. They didn’t speak for the two hour long ride. Two blocks from Titans Tower, she tapped him on the shoulder, and that’s where he dropped her off, never cutting the engine. 

He was about to drive off when she waved a hand in front of his face. He gestured that he was listening. 

“Red Robin told me that you’re a lit nerd,” she said evenly, arms crossed.

Jason raised an eyebrow as if to say  _ and?  _ even though she couldn’t see under the mask. 

“Here’s an answer to your earlier question -  ‘It cannot be sounded; my affection hath an unknown bottom, like the bay of Portugal.’ Get it?’

Jason stared at her for a moment, then nodded. Too bad Rose and his love lives’ wouldn’t end as happily as _ ‘As You Like It. _ ’ “Yeah. Relatable.”

Rose might’ve giggled, but she swallow her laugh and offered him a wave. “Commend me to my kind lady,” she misquoted. “Oh, farewell.”

“Exit Desmondea,” he replied, and drove off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's literally been four months lmao i am so sorry


End file.
